India's drone sector has lucrative investment opportunity: Celesta Capital

The drone sector in India is witnessing a surge of interest from investors, thanks to its promising growth potential and unique dynamics. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Nicholas Brathwaite of Celesta Capital expressed a strong belief in the investment potential of the drone sector in India. He highlighted the early bet his firm made on ideaForge, a drone manufacturer, citing their strong offerings even before they gained experience in the field.

“We continue to be very excited about India and it's good to see we are not the only ones that are excited. When we made the investment in ideaForge six years ago, we had looked at several drone companies in North America and other geographies, and we did not make any of those investments. We felt at that time the market had become somewhat crowded, it was hard to differentiate, but when we looked at ideaForge, we felt that the opportunity here was the fact that the Indian requirements were very different from everywhere else.” Brathwaite emphasised the uniqueness of the Indian opportunity in the drone sector, which attracted Celesta Capital's attention. Despite acknowledging challenges in artificial intelligence (AI), he stressed that addressing them should not lead to a slowdown in innovation. Sriram Viswanathan, also from Celesta Capital, emphasised the significance of the semiconductor market, noting its increasing importance for consumers. Viswanathan further highlighted Celesta Capital's goal of helping create the right ecosystems in countries like India to foster the development of the semiconductor industry. “The timing of the Indian government's focus on semiconductor, not just in factories of the fabs for manufacturing, but also the fabless area is profoundly significant. Especially if you take into account sort of the global sort of geopolitical issues that we're all faced with in terms of supply chain, in terms of new sort of applications in the genitive AI space, all of these areas bode very well for the Indian opportunity in the Indian ecosystem,” Viswanathan added. He emphasised that core technology in chips could be applied to various domains, including drones, image sensing, and even unconventional applications like pizza delivery. Mike Nohaile, representing Prellis Biologics, shed light on the exciting developments in the biologics field. He highlighted that around 70% of medicines today are derived from biologics, a process that traditionally took a significant amount of time. Nohaile also mentioned the use of 3D printing in the creation of lymph nodes and the application of generative AI to enhance their quality. Marc Bolitho from Recogni focused on the company's work in autonomous and electrified vehicles. He highlighted the lower power consumption of these vehicles, made possible through Recogni's advanced technologies. Bolitho emphasized that the integration of multiple sensors in autonomous vehicles requires substantial computing power. However, he expressed his belief that there is no need to slow down AI progress, as it plays a crucial role in enhancing the capabilities of autonomous mobility.